ly earnestly; "we
want ye to live as long as iver ye can please."

"It's quare an' nice for us when ye're alive," said Honeybird. Mrs
Bogue looked at them sharply. Both faces were beaming with happiness.

"You are very kind children," she said. She began to fumble in a bag
by her side. "Here is a shilling each for you."

The yellow carriage went on. Fly and Honeybird looked at each other.
Honeybird was thinking how glad she was that she had stayed with Fly
and had not gone off with the others. Fly was thinking how good
Almighty God had been to hear her prayer. They went on down the road
to Johnnie M'Causland's shop, and bought lemonade and sweets, and then
struck out across the fields towards the sea to find the others.

"Do ye know what?" said Fly, stopping in the middle of a field, with
her arms full of lemonade bottles. "Ye're always far happier after
ye're miserable. I believe He done it on purpose." She kicked up her
heels. "Let's run; it's a quare good ould world, an' God's a quare
good ould God, an' I'm awful happy."

CHAPTER XIII

JIMMIE BURKE'S WEDDING

Jimmie Burke's wife had not been dead a month, when one morning Teressa
brought the news that he was going to be married again.

"The haythen ould Mormon!" said Lull. "God help the wemen these days."

At first the children could not believe it. The late Mrs Burke had
been a friend of theirs. They had walked to the village every Sunday
afternoon, for the whole long year that she had been ill, with pudding
and eggs for her. And they thought Jimmie was so fond of her. He was
heartbroken when she died. When they went to the cottage the day
before the funeral, with a wreath of ivy leaves to put on the coffin,
they found him sitting beside the corpse, crying, and wiping his eyes
on a bit of newspaper. Even Jane, who, for some reason that she had
not given the others, had always hated Jimmie, told Lull when they came
home that she could not help thinking a pity of the man sitting there
crying like a child.

"It bates Banagher," said Teressa, sitting down by the fire with the
cup of tea Lull had given her--"an' the woman not cowld in her coffin
yet; sure, it's enough to make the dead walk."

"Och, but the poor critter was glad to rest," said Lull.

"An', mind ye, he's the impitent ould skut," Teressa went on, stirring
her tea with her finger; "he come an' tould me last night himself. An'
sez he: 'The wife she left me under no oblig